FINFAR 2014 CFP

What is Finfar?

Finfar 2014, Finncon’s academic conference, will gather together the foremost experts and students of fantasy and science fiction for two days at the University of Jyväskylä. Students and scholars of all levels are welcome; texts are welcome in English, Finnish, and Swedish.

Due to the participatory nature of the conference and limitations on time and space, the conference is open only for the participants and designated commentators.

The traditional, free annual meeting of science fiction and fantasy scholars is again hosted in conjunction with Finncon, this year in the University of Jyväskylä. The questions about the relations between mind and matter are wide open for discussion, and all areas of speculative fiction as well as the mediums are freely approached. We invite abstracts from various angles the convergence of mind, matter, time and space, ideas and arts, like “does mind matter”, “is there matter over mind”, or “does matter even care”. The mind/matter dichotomy is in connection to the questions of imagination and fantasy worlds and their materiality – like in dragonlands or steampunk.

Our Honorary member of Finfar, Cheryl Morgan will attend the English parts of the seminar. The commentators this year are Liisa Rantalaiho from the University of Tampere, researcher Markku Soikkeli, from the University of Helsinki Merja Polvinen and Paula Arvas, as well as Sofia Sjö from Åbo Akademi and Irma Hirsjärvi from the University of Jyväskylä.

We welcome all kinds of work focusing on science fiction and fantasy, whether you are working towards a seminar essay, article, MA thesis or a PhD. Papers can be in Finnish, Swedish or English, but if you wish to receive feedback from the international participants in the seminar, we recommend writing in English. The Guests of Honor are writers Elizabeth Bear and Hannu Rajaniemi and the Fan Guest of Honor the true new weird guy of Finland, Jukka Halme. However, even while/if we focus on the nature of reality and fiction through the themes of mind and matter, all the papers about the works of Bear and Rajaniemi, arts and quantum physics or new weird not to mention fantastic in general are most welcome as well.

The plan is that the first issue of the year 2015 of Fafnir – The Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research will again collect the articles from this seminar.

Please send your 300-word abstract by April 31st to hirsjarvi@gmail.com (Word or RTF) with title FINFAR 2014 ABSTRACT [YOUR NAME]. Selection will be made and further instructions sent during May. The final paper should be 10,000–15,000 characters in length. Depending on the amount of abstracts we receive, we will try to accommodate papers not directly related to the seminar’s theme.